The Ammunition Tracing Project

Ammunition is a rapidly consumable good. During periods of intense armed conflict or high rates of crime, it is used up quickly and needs to be replenished often. In this context, controlling the supply of ammunition can have a more immediate impact on armed violence than can the control over weapons.

Activists, journalists, and researchers increasingly view ammunition as a way to identify human rights abusers; parties to armed conflict; and, by extension, their supporters. Yet since publicly available or verifiable information on tracing illicit ammunition remains limited, these efforts can be problematic.